Friday, February 14, 2020

Back at the Drawing Board!

Ah yes, here we are once again, putting pen and pencil to paper. This time we're setting out for the adventure that is the Tucson Zine Fest coming up in May.
The original card illustrations
My wife Christy and I are working on putting together pieces for our pop music history book project. I had started this a while back as illustrated cards but figured out that cards weren't going to get us to a final printed booklet.  The cards were put away and we have since moved on to larger portraits.

Below, work in progress of Al Jolson, our representative from 1919!
The start of the Al Jolson illustration
Though the Tucson Zine Fest is not a sure thing yet (we'll get notified at the beginning of March if we've been accepted), we'll still be producing our booklet regardless.

Also joining us at the (hopefully) Tucson Zine Fest will be our buddy Brett Hanse.  Not sure what he's contributing yet but I'm sure it'll be fun.

The 'mostly' completed Morton Harvey illo.

Thursday, April 30, 2015

100 Years Of Popular Music - 1922: Fanny Brice

Fanny Brice – 1922
1891-1951

Born in New York to Hungarian Jews, Fanny Brice dropped out of school at the age of 17 and began working in a burlesque revue. Within two years she was a headliner for Ziegfeld Follies. By the early twenties Fanny had an enormous hit with the song “My Man” for Victor Records. It was around this time that she married her second husband Julius “Nicky” Arnstein who had served prison time in Sing Sing and had gang connections. Arnstein's lifestyle would return to haunt the couple as he would later be convicted of Wall Street bond theft and would again serve time in prison. Brice, at great expense, funded his legal defense. After serving three years, Arnstein was released and and left Brice and their two children. Fanny would eventually marry again but that marriage also failed. Fanny Brice continued to perform and was best know for her Baby Snooks character that she would act out on radio until the 1950's. She died in 1951 of a brain hemorrhage. The 1968 movie “Funny Girl” starring Barbara Streisand is loosely based on the life of Fanny Brice.

Monday, April 27, 2015

100 Years Of Popular Music - 1921: Marion Harris

Marion Harris – 1921
1896-1944

Marion Harris started out as a Vaudeville singer in the Midwest in the early 1910's. By 1917 she was recording music and performing on Broadway. She is by many considered one of the first women to sing blues and jazz songs written by African-American songwriters. She continued to perform on stage throughout the 1920's and began acting and singing in films. In the mid-thirties Marion Harris moved to England where she had performed at London's Cafe de Paris but her home was destroyed in a Nazi rocket attack and moved back to the states. She died tragically from burns after falling asleep in bed with a lit cigarette in April of 1944.